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Most Congested Route? This Week, D.C. to Pa.
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Several Clinton supporters said they want to prove that those who contend there is no way she can win the nomination are wrong. Although she trails in the number of pledged delegates and in the popular vote, Clinton supporters said a solid victory in Pennsylvania can lend credence to her message that she can carry crucial big states against Republican nominee John McCain.
A few weekends ago, Hanita Schreiber, 65, of Potomac made a four-hour round-trip commute to knock on doors for Clinton. She and her husband spent a chilly Saturday afternoon canvassing 40 houses in downtown Harrisburg. Schreiber, a retired health-care executive, has never done this much work on behalf of a candidate, but she said there has never been a politician she has felt this passionate about.
"I was a little nervous," Schreiber said of going door to door. "For the most part, people were quite nice. One couple said they were supporting Obama, but we had a nice talk. A couple of people said they were undecided, so I said, 'Is there anything I can tell you? Can I tell you why I'm supporting her?' "
Obama supporters are equally determined. They said he can win in Pennsylvania, even though polls generally show him trailing Clinton in the Keystone State.
At the 18th Amendment bar on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening, more than 100 Obama supporters gathered to watch him debate Clinton on TV. Before the main event, Kimberly Morton and Shana Mosher, organizers for D.C. for Obama, asked the crowd to donate money to help rent vans to send college students from Howard and Georgetown universities to Pennsylvania. (They raised $200 that night.)
They were working with Young Lawyers for Obama, and the goal, Morton and Mosher said, was to send more than 250 volunteers to canvass in Westchester, Pa., just outside of Philadelphia, a site picked by the Obama campaign. Each canvasser received materials from the campaign, but there was no script. The goal was simply to find potential Obama supporters and encourage them to vote, Mosher said.
In a corner of the dark bar, Tricia Kinch, 55, of Columbia Heights was wearing an Obama hat and T-shirt, and she had two dozen Obama buttons laid out in front of her. Within 24 hours, she would be headed to Philadelphia; she planned to work through the primary, crashing on the couches of volunteers who lived in the area. Although Obama was being grilled in the national press for remarks he made about low-income voters during a private event in San Francisco, Kinch said the controversy had motivated her because she thought Obama had been treated unfairly.
"I didn't think there was any way I could be more fired up, but, hey, let's get it on!" she exclaimed.
In Virginia, Maryland and the District, Obama swept the Potomac Primary on Feb. 12, with help from Fenty and Kaine, who both endorsed him last year. Anecdotal evidence suggests that more Obama supporters than Clinton backers will travel from Washington to Pennsylvania. Those who go would do well to heed the relentless approach offered by Richardson, a retired Army colonel, and Nuzum, a former commissioner at the International Trade Commission, the Virginia women who worked hard for every vote last weekend.
As a thunderstorm gathered in the distance, they trudged up a poorly lighted staircase at an apartment building looking for a man who was identified by the Obama campaign as a potential supporter.
"He doesn't live here," Zakiyyah Mitchell, 28, said when she answered her door, straining to control her pit bull.
"Well, are you a registered voter?" Nuzum asked, ignoring the dog. "Can we tell you real quick why Obama is the best?"
The women then touched on the themes of Obama's appeal: fresh start, new tone, change.
When they were done, Mitchell told them she would probably vote for Obama.
Staff writers Lori Aratani and Nikita Stewart contributed to this report.
